Tathea

by Anne Perry

  “But I asked for this deliberately,” she answered. “I made the decision. What if I am wrong? How did I dare do something so monstrous?”

  “Then it would be terrible. But you are not wrong.” His voice rang with certainty. “The barbarian incursions are not your doing, and that is why Isadorus is sending these men. He knows that if we do not make a stand here, then next time, or whatever time it is, it will be harder. If not now, when? When the south of Shinabar falls and they start coming up the coast, sinking our trading vessels? Or when they start taking the desert outposts? Or when the first Shinabari city falls? Or the first ten? Or at the walls of Thoth-Moara? Or—”

  “All right!” she cut him off sharply. “I understand Isadorus. But I am bringing Camassian armies against my own people.”

  “Would it be better to stay safely in the City in the Center of the World and do nothing while Shinabar sinks into apathy and corruption?” he challenged. “That is a slower death, but it is death just the same. The decision is yours either way, to fight or to stay your hand. That is what it is to be leader, whether you call it general, Isarch, or prophet.”

  She stood for several moments without answering. She knew the truth of what he said, but it was hard and in some ways the final loneliness.

  He remained a little behind her, sheltering her from the wind with his body.

  “Do you want to fight for what is true so the wisdom and the light can belong to anyone who wants it?” he said with sharp urgency. “Remember, there is no middle ground. We are either for God or we are for Asmodeus. We are for the light, the beauty, the good, or we are for darkness, pain, and bondage. There is no place between, only the illusion of it, and that too is a creation of the Enemy, the eternal lie, that you can win without battle, reap without cost, triumph without courage or pain.”

  She reached and grasped his hand. “All right ... I had forgotten for a moment. I understand. I’m ready to go. I don’t need to watch here anymore.” She turned to look at him. He was slender and very dark here in the sunlight reflected from the water. He was dressed in Camassian armor, but he looked as Shinabari as she did. She smiled at him, holding his fingers more tightly. “Thank you! You have always been there when I most needed you. I hope you always will be.”

  “I promise it,” he said fiercely. “Now more than ever.”

  The voyage was remarkably smooth, the wind just sufficient to fill the sails. Tathea spent much time on deck in the lead ship of the armada. It was the first time she had been away from Camassia since she had come from the Lost Lands. She had dreamed of returning to Shinabar, of seeing the cities again, of smelling the desert, seeing a cloudless sky blazing with stars and smelling the herbs, hearing the silence broken only by the trickling of sand, and feeling it sharp against the skin.

  Alexius and Ra-Nufis spent many hours together reading and studying the maps of Shinabar and Ra-Nufis’s notes about the terrain, the patterns of soft or shifting sand, scree beds, which oasis would have water at this time of the year and which not. Ra-Nufis also spoke much about reading the weather. The dangers to watch for were sudden winds which could raise the sand and carry it in storms that would blind and choke and drown even an army. The sharp particles carried at whiplike speed would strip the skin from the face.

  And there were other things to weigh and learn also, such as the names and strength of all the leaders between where the army landed and Thoth-Moara who might turn in their favor, who might give information.

  Tathea sat beside them and listened. Occasionally she added her own advice, but hers was from memory of six years ago, and she was constantly reminded how much had changed. But how much of it was change and how much only reality unseen before?

  It was strange to hear her own country discussed in this way, people whom she had ruled the greater part of her adult life. Every one of them would have known her name. Most of them would even have seen some representation of her on a coin or medallion, maybe even a painting or statue on the façade of a building. Now here she was speaking of them with a Camassian general as if they were enemies to be ravaged by an army and subjected to an alien occupation.

  Often she stood on deck and watched the shifting pattern of light on the sea, brilliant, burning blue, in the distance so dark it was like ink. And as the light and shadows changed and she heard the hiss of water and the creak of wood and the wind in the canvas, she half remembered other voyages, brilliant, wind-washed skies higher and softer than these, shot with a different light. A sense of longing filled her, a loneliness for something ineffably sweet which she had once known—or dreamed. It lay just beyond reaching, aching with a wild and fearful beauty, but always on the edge of her mind, too elusive to touch.

  Half the armada landed to the east of the great seaport of Tarra-Ghum, half to the west, disembarking in the water and wading ashore. The heat dried their garments within minutes. Even the leather of armor took no more than an hour. Tathea watched them, phalanx upon phalanx of them, perfectly disciplined to march at the command, ready to attack the city of Tarra-Ghum.

  Her throat was dry. Her skin prickled with the heat, and she had to narrow her eyes against the glare of it on the pale sand. It was six years since she had been here, but it was as if the time between had disappeared in the hard, glittering reality of it. She must be ready too. She must not fail them. She must not fail the God who had entrusted her with the Book, and who had supported and sustained her ever since, laying the hand of peace on her heart.

  But now that it was written out in Camassian and Shinabari, was she necessary any longer? She could be killed in battle, and the Book would still go forward. Ra-Nufis could carry it. He loved it enough. That thought rippled through her like ice, even in the Shinabari sun. It was sheer physical fear! She had not realized it so clearly before, but she had assumed that because she was the Keeper of the Book she would be preserved to teach it to her people, but perhaps this was not so.

  Alexius was at her elbow. It was time for her to disembark. Aurelian had taken the western half of the armada. She was to go with Alexius to the east. She must march with him, at his side. It was the thought of being less than he believed of her that drove her to move, to pick up her sword and walk down the ramp into the sea without flinching as she sank to the waist and waded ashore.

  Rank upon rank the army massed as far as she could see around her. There was a restlessness in them, as if the suppressed energy of the days at sea was barely under control. They were hungering to meet the challenge for which they had come. There was a mighty stirring and rustling of movement, the clink of armor, the shuffle of feet.

  The sun beat down on them with relentless brilliance. The sooner they were on the move, the better. She turned round to Alexius. She must tell him so.

  But Alexius was fifty yards away, speaking to a dozen lieutenants, and even as she watched, the first column moved forward and began the steady, rhythmic march west across the sand, the leaders scarlet-plumed, the sun glinting on bronze and polished leather.

  It was time she began to march too. She had chosen to come as a soldier, not a passenger. Alexius would march on foot, as his men did. There was no horse for her to ride and no men set aside to carry her in a chair. She, of all of them, should be able to abide the heat. Only Ra-Nufis knew it better.

  She had gone less than half a mile when he joined her, smiling, glancing around him at the tens of thousands of soldiers like a moving tide darkening the desert’s face. He did not ask if he might walk beside her; he simply assumed the duty and behaved as if it were a privilege.

  They did not speak. Desert travelers knew well enough that every ounce of strength should be guarded for the physical needs of maintaining an even speed, a pace that was slow enough not to exhaust the muscles but fast enough to reach the desired destination within the second hour after sundown, before the real cold settled in. In the summer, the process was reversed. One traveled by night and found shelter within an hour of sunrise, or perished.

  Ra-Nufis
watched her closely, always ready in case she were exhausted, short of water, hurt, or found her weapon too heavy. To glance sideways and see him, sometimes to meet his eyes and know that he would not leave her, gave her more strength than she could have foreseen. She was able to bear the aching legs, the blistered feet, the weight of her sword, even the heat and glare of the sun she had all but forgotten in her years in Camassia. She had not realized how soft she had grown in the city. If Alexius had not made her work so strenuously in their mock battles she would have fallen by the wayside and been someone’s burden by now, carried like a wounded man. Silently she blessed him for that. Her lips were too dry, her breath too like fire in her lungs to say it aloud.

  They stopped in a dried-up riverbed an hour after sundown and made camp. Food was sparse, for the land provided no supplement to the rations they carried: dried meat, biscuits, dates, and rough wine. It was eaten uncooked to avoid the need for fires, whose flame would be seen at night, its smoke by day. They had seen no travelers, no scouts to report their presence, but it could not be assumed Tarra-Ghum had no knowledge of them. Tathea was offered a little privacy, being the only woman, but there was no extra water for her to wash in. She had to dampen her face with wet hands, and be grateful for sufficient to take the edge from her thirst.

  She took off her boots and looked grimly at her blistered feet, unused to hard marching.

  “Put salve on them,” the legionary closest to her said sympathetically. “Else you’ll have them septic in a couple of days. Got any?”

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “Thank you.”

  “Wrap them in clean cloth,” he added, squinting at her. “Got that too?”

  “Yes. Thank you for the advice.”

  “Take it! Get sand in those blisters and you’ll have to be carried.”

  Carefully, wincing, she obeyed, knowing the truth of what he said. She must not let Alexius down through pride or stupidity.

  Sentries were posted, and every man slept rolled in his cloak with his sword by his side. Tathea slept from exhaustion, although she had not expected to. To lie on the bare sand under the desert stars, surrounded by the myriad noises of two hundred thousand men was a monstrous kind of loneliness. Apart from Ra-Nufis, she was the only one whose native earth this was, and she was not a traveling trader, but an empress.

  She thought of her father. He had been a desert prince. He would have understood this and been at home here. He would have known the great wheel of stars above her and named the brightest. From the stars he would have known where he was, as a mariner does at sea. But he was long since dead, buried in a rock tomb two thousand miles south of where she lay.

  They ate again in the morning, then prepared to march, armed and at the ready. By noon they would reach the outskirts of Tarra-Ghum, but surely they would have encountered the enemy before that.

  Tathea’s back and legs ached appallingly. When she first set out she almost cried out with the pain of making her muscles stretch again. The blisters on her feet stabbed with each step as the thongs of her boots caught them. She was even softer than she had feared. But when Alexius asked her how she was, she gritted her teeth.

  “Well, thank you,” she lied.

  Ra-Nufis said nothing, but his concerned eye betrayed his knowledge that she was far from as well, or as sanguine, as she said. She was grateful for his silence.

  The enemy struck without warning, sweeping in from the northeast, cutting them off from the sea. One moment they seemed alone on the endless waves of sand, the next there was shouting, the clatter of drawn swords, men moving hastily and then a breath-holding stillness before the charge.

  The shock of the two armies meeting was a vortex like a whirlpool of the sea. Men were swept off their feet in the torrent of the attack. Dry sand was flung up, sun gleamed on Camassian bronze and Shinabari copper, red and blue plumes were tangled together, bodies and weapons spattered with blood.

  Tathea held her sword ready, but all around her remained calm—men waiting, faces set, eyes steady. If they were afraid, they masked it well. There was barely a flicker, a nerve ticking in a cheek, sweat running free on the skin, knuckles white.

  The waiting seemed endless. She could taste the salt of sweat when she licked her lips.

  Then it came. The order was muffled at first, just a shout. It was a split second before she understood it. The men in front of her surged forward, and the legionary captain beside her called something indistinct and tried to push her out of the way.

  Someone near her yelled. There was a shock of steel meeting steel, a scream, and the next moment the battle was around her. The tide had switched unexpectedly, and although she had been placed in what was thought to be the safest quarter, it was no longer so. There was a Shinabari soldier in front of her, a spear’s length away, an ordinary soldier, such as any one of the many who had served Mon-Allat, lined the streets at his enthronement, cheering, calling his name. He probably had a family in one of the cities or villages she knew.

  He raised his sword and swung it. To him she was a Camassian, an invader. She might be unusually dark, but he took her for a boy, not a woman. In a moment he would kill her.

  Instinctively she stepped sideways as Alexius had taught her. He moved also. She stepped back, and he lunged forward, off balance. The instant was enough. She struck at his arm, gashing it to the bone.

  She had never drawn blood before, not streaming scarlet blood pouring out of a wound. It was terrible, sickening. She saw the horror in his face and froze.

  She was knocked so hard from behind she fell forward onto her knees, for a moment unable to draw breath, her chest shot through with pain. Then her arm was grasped, and she was yanked to her feet just as a Shinabari spear landed quivering in the ground where she had knelt.

  A Camassian soldier, a weathered, grizzled man with a scar across his nose, shouted at her and laughed. Then he swung round and began laying into everything copper that he could see or reach, and a moment later his armor was streaked with his own blood.

  There was no time to think. On every side was violence, the din of metal crashing on metal, screams and cries, the stagger and lurch of battle, the burning heat, the stench of blood and sweat and fear.

  Tathea fought because she had no choice. It was instinct to swing the sword and to shout with the rest, to attack everything blue, to defend everyone wearing the bronze and red. She wounded and killed men she did not know and risked her own life to save other strangers because they wore the same uniform she did.

  She saw hideous injuries, agony, which would return to haunt her for years to come. She slipped and fell in blood as if in a slaughterhouse. The battle moved one way then another, but gradually she realized they were driving the enemy backwards. More of the bodies on the ground wore blue than red, although in the carnage it was not always easy to tell.

  She ached with bruises and cuts, but there was no time to think of them, far less to bind them. The Camassians were beginning to re-form their lines to press forward. The years of iron discipline were paying off. Only part of her brain was aware of it, but with a mixture of fierce, physical triumph and bitter, emotional shame, she realized that the Shinabari forces had not the courage to face their foe when the few men of the old training, the old valor, were dead. And they had fallen early because their fellows were in disarray, lacking the heart and the faith in themselves and their purpose to stand firm. And so more of them fell than needed to, driven by panic and lack of order and skill.

  The mangled bodies of the old guard, fallen in the van of the attack, filled Tathea with horror. Her imagination of the pain choked her with tears that she had no time to shed. Her own men were pressing forward, trampling on the slain, even on the wounded because there was no way to avoid them. Their cries filled her mind, and there was nothing she could do. Alexius would close the victory. Whatever he felt inside, and she could only imagine it, he never lost his mastery of himself or his men. No fear, physical exhaustion or pain, no pity or horror at the
butchery deflected him.

  By the end of the day it was over. The Shinabari had retreated towards Thoth-Moara, and Alexius had allowed them to take their wounded with them.

  “That was merciful,” she said to him as they stood together beyond the encampment and stared in the wild light of sunset over the desolation of the battlefield. Men with torches were moving as far as the eye could see, flashing and glimmering against the sand and the darker mounds of bodies. They were physicians doing what they could for the wounded, ordinary men looking for friends, searching for identification of the dead, carrying water, bandages, blankets, cloaks. There was no time to bury the bodies. Already carrion birds were gathering. The groans of the injured and dying came sharp and desperate in the thin desert air. The smell of slaughter was everywhere.

  Tathea was too drenched with pity and choking, nauseating horror to be aware of her own physical pain.

  “Not mercy,” Alexius said quietly, standing at her elbow. “I wish I could afford it, but seldom does war allow mercy. Pity for the enemy too often means betrayal of your own, who have trusted you. I let them go because I can’t look after them or feed them. Also there is the very practical consideration that their wounded will slow them up. They are a civilized people and will not leave them behind as the barbarians often do.”

  She could not comprehend it. “Just ... to die? That’s ...” There was no word to describe her horror.

  “No. They kill them themselves,” he corrected her. “They consider it an honorable death.”

  She did not answer. It was difficult to think of honor in the same breath as blinding pain, terror, and mangled, dismembered bodies. Honor was an idea; what she had just witnessed was the awful reality.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked quietly.